#Middlebury #OfficeofInspectorGeneral #Scams
VETERANS POST
By Freddy Groves
The year ended as expected, with the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General nailing even more criminals. One of the recent scams sends a chill down the spine.
In that scam, a company with branches in two states submitted false claims for patients getting remote cardiac monitoring services by signing them up for other levels of services than what the doctor had requested. This netted the company tons of reimbursement money over the six years they ran the fraud.
The company had their salespeople instruct clinical office staff on how to place the orders online and pointed them to the higher of three monitoring choices, while knowing that the doctor actually wanted a lower level of service as noted in the enrollment notes.
A thumbs-up to a whistleblower who brought this to the attention of the authorities. All the big players got involved: the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Health and Human Services, Department of Defense criminal investigators and our favorite government group: the VA’s Office of Inspector General. The scammers will pay back nearly $15 million for all those false claims. The whistleblower will receive nearly $2 million for stepping forward.
What sends a chill down the spine is wondering if any cardiac patients who were genuinely supposed to receive the highest level of monitoring only received the lowest while the scammers were so busy creating false claims.
In another case previously written about here, the thieves were finally sentenced for their crimes. The criminals had been caught scamming veterans, claiming they were providing home aid and assistance services when no services were actually provided. Over the six years the scam went on, the thieves netted millions of dollars.
I was hopeful for long sentences for all of them, with an initial report indicating that they could possibly receive sentences of up to 20 years in prison. Alas, it was not to be. They were finally convicted on wire fraud with sentences ranging from only one month to 24 months in prison.
© 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.
